Old-school rock and roll hasn’t changed all that music in the last 40 years. Then again, it doesn’t have to. You can make a good argument that the genre found its perfect form a while back, meaning that all you need to do is make it fit your personality, vision, and needs – bend it to your creative will and let the spirit of rock and roll do the rest. Fundamentally, if done right, it is always going to sell itself.
You could also argue that all you can do under such circumstances is re-invent the wheel to some degree; but at least artists such as LastTimeDown are smart enough to add some fancy trims, rev the engine excessively, take that wheel for a spin around the block, ignoring stop signs and pedestrians, jumping the lights, leaving tire marks on the road surface and generally annoying the neighbors. This is rock and roll, after all.
Just a snapshot of the songs found on this St Louis-based band’s debut, Rose Colored Glasses/First Time Around, shows you exactly how you balance the old with the new, how you can play with the form and format but leave the essence of old-school rock and roll alive and kicking.
“Waiting on a Sunny Day” is fired by a solid, gritty, staccato energy, guitars grinding out an unrelenting groove, driven on by bass and beats that both power and punctuate. Then, the choruses explode into anthemic, rabble-rousing sonics, allowing incendiary salvos and squalling guitars to blow the song wide open.
Like all good rock and roll, there is no shortage of heavy blues licks, and “One Way Love” and its boogie-some beats, euphoric and restless momentum, and vocals that seem to be fifty percent bar band and fifty percent stadium ready is a prime example of rock music remembering where it comes from. Previous single “Roses Are Red” also shows that when they choose to calm things down and move away from the foot-on-the-monitor kick-ass groovers, they can create slinky, seductive slices of brooding blues-rock too.
And you could argue that you have heard it all before, or something a lot like it. Well, you have. But that blend of reassuring familiarity, power and poise, groove and grind, muscle, and melody, coupled with enough freshness, makes music like this so accessible, so welcoming.
Rock and roll ain’t dead; it just got itself a new pair of driving gloves! Let’s take this for another spin!
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